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Indonesian women still face many challenges
Jakarta Post - March 6, 2008
A. Junaidi, Jakarta – Indonesian women still face substantial challenges in regard to access to education, protection from domestic violence and increasing fundamentalism in society, which has lead to laws restricting women, observers and activists say.
Commenting on International Women's Day, which falls on March 8, Sulistyowati Irianto, chairperson of the Women's Studies Center of the University of Indonesia, said the main challenges that Indonesian women faced related to legal problems.
"Limited knowledge of the legal rights of women and the absence of women in the regulation-drafting process have led to such discriminatory laws," Sulistyowati, who is also a lecturer of law at the university, said last week.
She said a recent study, which was sponsored by the World Bank and conducted in hundreds of villages across the country, revealed that empowering women could prevent many violations, including practices of corruption.
She said women were not involved in the deliberation of bylaws in certain regencies and cities, such as in Tangerang, Banten, Cianjur, West Java and Padang.
Many activists blame sharia (Islamic law) for inspiring the creation of discriminatory bylaws, which, among other things, instructs women how to dress and bans them from going out after dark.
A few months ago, a female worker who was waiting for a public transportation van in Tangerang was arrested by public order officers who accused her of being a prostitute. She was arrested for "hanging around the streets after dark", which is prohibited by one of the regency's bylaws.
The arrest triggered a national debate over whether regencies should be allowed to create their own such bylaws, which many female activists deem a violation of the State Constitution that protects human rights.
Separately, Musdah Mulia, a professor at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, said many people wrongly interpreted verses from the Koran and hadith (the deeds of Prophet Muhammad), including teachings relating to women.
"I'm not anti-sharia. But most people do not understand sharia," Musdah, who is also a leader in the country's largest Islamic organization, Nahdlatul Ulama, said in a discussion on "Women and Democracy" held in Jakarta recently.
She said sharia should protect all human beings – including women – instead of limiting them, which could be seen in the current bylaws of some regencies and cities.
"We should be making bylaws that increase women's education levels and protect our migrant workers, who are mostly women," said Musdah, who has written many books on Islam and women's rights.
She said the deliberation of the bylaws was more political than religiously fundamental since many of the initiators were actually secular politicians, including from the Golkar Party, the political machine of former president Soeharto.
Separately, Yoyoh Yusroh, a legislator of the Prosperous Justice Party, urged people to not view the bylaws as restricting women's public activities, but as protecting them.
"Many women still want to be at home at night," Yoyoh, a member of the House of Representatives, said. She said the low level of education among women and the high rate of domestic violence were the real challenges Indonesian women faced.
According to a survey conducted by the National Commission on Violence Against Women, the total number of reported cases of violence against women in 2006 reached 22,512, up from the 20,391 cases reported in 2005 and the 14,020 cases in 2004. In 2003, 7,787 cases were recorded.
Gadis Arivia of the University of Indonesia said the application of sharia could violate the rights of women of other faiths, adding it was not in line with the essence of democracy.
"Democracy should protect the interests of all people, including those from minority groups. Politically, women could be categorized as a minority," Gadis, a lecturer at the university's school of philosophy, said in the discussion at the Jurnal Perempuan office in South Jakarta.
She viewed the current political system as a "procedural" democracy, meaning all the decisions were decided democratically by the majority without considering the minorities, including women.
With the current bylaws, Gadis said, many women felt that democracy did not benefit them. "But for me, it's still the best system. The problem is how to develop democracy in Indonesia so that is more substantial, more participatory."
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